Jio's Business Expansion & Launch of GigaFiber

Jio, a Telco which brought in a revolutionary change in data usage all over the country, which gave the other Telco’s a run for their money, by providing a fastest and cheapest network. It holds the credit of elevating the country to the second position in internet usage globally. Realizing the game of securing higher subscriber is over, Jio is venturing into broadband services for the further expansion of its business. It is expecting its GigaFiber broadband service to be launched on 5th September 2019, which marks the third anniversary of Jio’s launch.

Considering the varied customer preference the company has planned to set the broadband price range starting from 700 to 10, 000 per month. On the data speed, Jio intends to offer the minimum data speed of 100 Mbps and the maximum data speed would go up to 1Gbps, based on the plans opted.

In a very short duration Jio has reached great heights of success. Over the period of time, it has signed several MoU to strengthen its base and expand its business. Jio has signed numerous MoUs with Andhra Pradesh, as a part of one such MoU, in 2018, it has pledged 15,000 crore to set up a world-class electronics manufacturing unit in Tirupati for the manufacturing of Jio phones, set-top boxes and other electronic devices. This investment is also expected to create about 20,000 new job opportunities in Andhra Pradesh. On a measure to provide free internet access to students of state run engineering college and industrial training institutes, the company has signed a MoU with Punjab in 2017.

While in 2018, Jio entered into partnership with SBI to fortify its digital partnership. Recently in July 2019, it has signed MoU with the Himachal Pradesh government on account of digitalizing Himachal Pradesh. The company has agreed to pay 626 crore for the development of the infrastructure. This project would include fiber to home to connect 1.7 lakh houses and enterprises, with a budget of 96 crore. This would provide employment to more than 150 people. It also includes 1,500 4G site set up with an investment of 370 crore, this as well expects over 150 job opportunities. Further 160 crore has been allocated for the optical fiber cable roll-out in the state; this intends employment for more than 50 people.

Apart from these, it has also signed MoU with several universities and colleges to establish next-gen digital infrastructure on their campuses. The universities that signed the MoU include NIMS University, SRM University, Arunachal University, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule (MJP) Rohilkhand University, Nagpur University, Manav Rachna Vidyanatariksha, Rajiv Gandhi University and more.

Through various investment and business strategies Jio continued to excel. As of June 2019 it has resumed to attract 8.26 million mobile users, Vodafone has lose 4.1 million customers making Jio’s subscribers base cross 340 million. While it’s arch-rival Bharthi Airtel stood at 320.35 million as of June this year.

Trai data report that Jio has widened its market share to 28.42 percent from 27.8 percent, while the Vodafone Idea and Airtel shares narrowed to 32.9 percent from 33.36 percent and 27.49 percent from 27.58 percent respectively in May 2019.